The second release of the HP 3000 Series III simulator is now available
from the Computer History Simulation Project (SIMH) site:
https://github.com/simh/simh
This release adds a simulation of the HP 2607, 2613, 2617, and 2618 line
printers and supports the use of custom VFU tape images, as well as the
built-in HP-standard VFU tape. The full set of configurable options is
detailed in a new section of the HP 3000 Simulator User's Guide that is
provided in Microsoft Word format in the "doc" subdirectory of the code
base snapshot downloaded from the github site. A PDF version of the
updated manual is also available at:
http://alum.mit.edu/www/jdbryan/hp3000_doc.pdf
In addition, the preconfigured MPE-V/R disc image available from Bitsavers:
http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/HP/HP_3000/
...has been updated to add the following features:
- The MPE cold load command files attach the line printer to the "lp.txt"
output file and specify the "-n" option to clear the file before use.
- Preinstalled User-Defined Commands (UDCs) provide access to the COBOL
74 compiler with the MPE-V/E :COBOLII, :COBOLIIPREP, and :COBOLIIGO
commands, and to the COBOL 85 compiler with :COBOLIIX,
:COBOLIIXPREP, and :COBOLIIXGO. However, note that the simulator
currently does not provide the HP 32234A COBOL II firmware
instructions, so programs generated by the COBOLII compiler will
abort at run time with "ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION" errors, limiting the
current utility of the compilers to syntax checking.
Thanks once again go to Frank McConnell for providing the HP line printer
subsystems manuals that facilitated development of the new simulation, and
to Robert Mills for providing the COBOLII UDCs.
-- Dave